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I have such fond memories of making Spritz cookies as a child. My mom used to make it so much fun for my sister, Kelly, and I. She would press out all the cookies with the ancient metal cookie press and we would then get to decorate them. We used cut up maraschino cherries for the Scottie dog’s collar, silver ball candies for the balls on the Christmas trees, sprinkles for the wreaths. Then we made sure to sample them as they came out of the oven. Oh, the memories. I wanted to start to pass along some of these traditions to my kids, so I made sure they were both present for the Spritz cookie baking & decorating.

This recipe is straight from the old Betty Crocker Cookbook, modified to be gluten-free.

1 cup butter, softened (no margarine here…butter is a must!)

1/2 cup sugar

2 1/4 cups GF flour mix (I used Carol’s Sorghum Mix)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp xanthan gum

1 egg

1 tsp almond extract (another must have….this makes these cookies!)

1. Cream butter & sugar.

2. Blend in remaining ingredients.

3. Chill for 30 minutes or so.

4. Heat oven to 400.

5. Fill cookie press with 1/4 of the dough at a time.

6. Form desired shapes on ungreased baking sheet

7. Bake 6 to 9 minutes or until set, but not brown

8. Cool slightly & then remove to cooling racks.

My notes:

Don’t use Pamela’s Baking Mix or any other mix with baking soda or baking powder for this recipe

My cookie press is very cantankerous. I don’t know what the issue is, but the dough likes to stick to the plastic disks . This happened pre-GF, too, so it isn’t the GF dough. Maybe try parchment paper on the cookie sheet to convince the dough to want to stick to the cookie sheet.

My oven took exactly 6 minutes. If I had left them in for 9, they would have been brown. I use an oven thermometer to monitor the temp in my oven at all times. Best $10 I ever spent.

Towards the end, we gave up on the cookie press & started rolling them by hand:

Jon threatening me to eat the dough – I had already freaked out on him once b/c of the raw eggs. Funny guy. 😉

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17 Responses

Oh, thank you for this, it brought tears to my eyes. I too have childhood memories of making spritz cookies, my absolute favorite, with my mom. After she passed away, I tried so hard to re-create them, first with her (very old) manual cookie press, then with an electric one I bought, failing at both and going with the hand method as you did. Your cookies look just as i remember them. I haven’t made them in years and didn’t even think about trying to make them now that I’m GF. (though for some reason I still have red and green sugar crystals in my pantry) Now, I just might.

Thank you for posting this recipe. I found out in Sept that I need to stick to a gf diet and was wondering how I could keep up the holiday cookie making tradition (especially the Betty Crocker spritz).

I remember having the same sticky dough issue too (pre-gluten free). The issue was the dough was too warm. I usually kept the dough in the frig until I need more in the press. Hopefully this will work with gluten free recipes too.

Thanks again for posting and I look forward to giving this gf recipe a shot.

Wow, I’m so excited to find this recipe modification! Growing up, my mom, sis & I would make several varieties of spritz cookies, but our absolute favorite was (and is) Mexican Swizzle Stick cookies. I have two ASD boys, and we’ve all (mostly) been GFCF for one and a half years. I really wanted to share my favorite cookies with my boys but I wanted guidance on how to modify the recipe. Now that I’ve seen this, I’m planning to make swizzle stick cookies this weekend. Woo-hoo!! I’ll post back to let y’all know how they turn out. (BTW, we always used to end up hand forming the last few ounces of dough, too; I guess it’s just part of using a cookie press.)

The look lovely. OK so here is my tried and true with the cookie press issues. I just made regular not GF cookies. Take the dough out of the frig 1 hour prior to putting it in the press. DO NOT USE non-stick pan or parchment paper. Press the gun and hold it in place for about 30 seconds then pull straight up and the cookies will not stick to the discs. If just perfected this with my Pampered Chef original press.
I will absolutely make your recipe and try them tomorrow in the press, my niece and her 3 1/2 year old daughter is also now gluten free. Her Lily just asked her mama if they can make the fancy Christmas cookies with the sprinkles. God love her. I will persevere for them as well. Happy baking. Merry Christmas to all.